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S P E K C H 



SAMUEL J. TILDEN 



DEMOCRATIC STATE CONVENTION, 







ROCHESTER, OCTORER 4, 1871. 



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Reverently I thank God that when midnight darkness brooded 
over the Republic, and the true men who were guarding the sacred 
traditions of free government created by Jefferson and vindicated 
by Jackson— and upheld in our State by the Clintons, Tompkins, 
Van Buren, Wright and Marcy— sat at their watch despondent, the 
uplifted cloud begins to show its silver lining and there is revealed 
the dawn of a new and better day. The Democracy, burnishing 
its armor and purifying its ranks, advances to fight anew the battle 
against centralism and corruption to which seventy-five years ago 
it was first led by Thomas Jefierson in the nation and by George 
Clinton in this State. 

Those dangers have recently assumed vastly greater dimensions 
than at the birth or at any other time during the existence of the 
Republic. Mankind naturally fear the evils they have last expe- 
rienced, even after those evils have passed away and others, of the 
opposite character, have taken their place. It is a maxim of his- 
tory that government is always strengthened by unsuccessful in- 
surrection. We have just emerged from a vast civil war in which 
we have conquered a rebellion undertaken to break up our federal 
government. Disunion is crushed, slavery is dead forever, the 
suffrage is irreversibly given to the colored race, the original object 
of the war is accomplished, every natural result is attained ; and 
yet in our recoil from a danger completely passed we rush blindly 
towards the opposite peril. The equilibrium of our whole political 
system is in danger of being overthrown, and a despotic and 
corrupt centralism established. The whole value of the arrange- 



iiK'iil l>y wliirh our world is kej>t in its place in the solar system 
is in the balance between two opposing forces. It would matter 
little to us which of these forces should be allowed to prevail. If 
the centrifugal tendency should dominate, our planet would shoot 
madly into the realms of endless space, far away from the source of 
heat and light and life, until every living thing upon its surface 
Avould perish. If the centripetal tendency should prevail, the earth 
would rush with inconceivable velocity towards the sun until it 
would be engulfed in the burning mass. 

So it is with the adjustment of powers between the State and 
Federal governments ; disunion and centralization are equally fatal 
to good government. Disunion would generate the centralism of 
military despotism in the separate States. Centralism attempted 
over areas and populations so vast would break the parts asunder 
and fill our continent, as it has every other, with rival nations. 

Our wise ancestors devised the only system possible to avoid these 
opposite evils. They formed a Federal government to manage our 
foreign relations, to maintain peace and unity between the States, 
and to administer a few exceptional functions of common interest ; 
and they left the great residuary mass of governmental powers to 
the States. The Deraoci-atic party has carried on the Federal gov- 
ernment for fifty of tlie seventy years of the present century. 

Its creed is comprised in two ideas : First, to limit as much as pos- 
sil)le all governmental power, enlarging always and everywhere the 
domain of in«li\ idual judgment and action ; secondly, to throw back 
the governmental ])owers necessary to be exercised as much as possi- 
ble uj)on the States and the localities, a})proaching in every case the 
individuals to be affected. These ideas dominate over the Demo- 
cratic party, and find in it their best representative. The opposite 
ideas — to meddle witli everything properly belonging to individ- 
uals and to centralize all governmental powers — express the ten- 
dencies of the Republican party. Under their inspiration the Fed- 



eral government is rapidly seizing u])on all the powers of human 
society. It has assumed to regulate the suffrage and threatens to 
take the control of all elections. It perverts the power to raise 
revenue into a means of dictating what kinds of business men shall 
employ their labor and capital in ; of giving bounties and granting 
monopolies; of enriching favored classes by impoverishing the 
earnings of the people. It has drawn within its power all the 
banks ; it has begun to create insurance corporations, and it yearns 
to take jurisdiction of all railroad companies. Its career of usurpa- 
tion, if continued a few years longer, will involve all the business, 
all the contracts and all the property of individuals, and will po[)U- 
late Washington with the lobbies of thirty-seven States. 

I oppose centralism because it is incompatil)le with civil liberty. 
Forty millions of people, guided by a single hand, would sweep over 
all dissent and all resistance of isolated or unorganized individuals. 
Look at France, Half a million of office-holders and half a million 
of soldiers moved from the centre make civil liberty impossible, 

I oppose centralism because it creates an irresponsible power, and 
an irresponsible power is always corrupt. A government ruling 
all the affairs of individuals and localities from the Atlantic to the 
Pacific, from the great lakes to the Gulf of Mexico, would be the 
most incompetent for what it would undertake, the most oppres- 
sive, the most irresponsible and the most corrupt government of 
which history affords any example. It Avould repeat and exagge- 
rate the crimes of the worst governments in the worst ages. Al- 
ready the system is maturing its fatal fruits. Demoralization in 
public trusts prevails to an extent never before known in tliis. coun- 
try, and scarcely believed to be possible. 

The mass of men of all parties are pure in their intentions, but 
parties differ in the tendencies of their principles and measures and 
the ideal standards and training of their leaders. The Democratic 
party from its foundation, three-quarters of a century ago, has held 



and acted upon ideas which tend to j^^irity in government. It has 
exacted in its leaders a higher standard of oiRcial purity than any other 
party in the country. It has never elected to the presidency any man 
of as low a standard of official life as either of the three Republican 
presidents. Every Democratic national convention would, by com- 
mon consent, liave rejected from its nomination a man who had filled 
the public offices with his relatives, or who had been enriched by 
costly presents while exercising the immense power of the presi- 
dency to promote men's interest, or gratify men's ambition. Even 
in the corrupt times of James the First, the greatest intellect which 
has appeared among men, Bacon, was impeached by our ancestors, 
because, as Lord High Chancellor of England, he had received 
presents from suitors in causes depending before him. His defence 
was that he had decided those causes against the parties which had 
made the presents. Grant has decided the causes of those who 
were candidates for the great civil trusts of the country in favor of 
those who made him presents. 

Jeffisrson left among the noble traditions of his precej^t and 
example the maxims that he would not appoint relatives to office, 
whatever their fitness, and that while in official life, he would do 
nothing to increase his fortune. He would keep himself not only 
pure, but he would hold high the standard of public morality. 

I do not wish to speak harshly of the illustrious soldier who 
fills the presidential chair. He may not have been conscious 
of the evil in the fatal example Avhich he has set. But when 
the two ideas of personal gain and the bestowal of office are 
allowed, to be in one mind at the same time they will become asso- 
ciated, and it is but a step to the sale of the greatest trusts. Intel- 
lect, training, virtue, will soon succumb to wealth. Vulgai- mil- 
lionaires will grasp the highest seats of honor and power as they 
would put a new emblazonment on their carriages or a gaudy 
livery upon their servants. 



I tui'n now to our own State. The era of Democratic ascendency 
was the twenty-five years under the Constitution of 1821. Van 
Buren, Marcy, Wright and Flagg ruled. They were men of 
absolute personal lionor and truth, and in all the counties they 
attracted to themselves similar men. They wielded party power 
not only for pure measures but for honest men. If a young man 
who had served one session in the Legislature came back to 
lobby, he lost his standing with the party leaders. Corruption 
in the legislative bodies was almost unknown. Even in 1836, in 
the wild speculation of that time, three Democratic senators who 
had kept back a bill aljout the Harlem railroad, in order to buy 
some of its stock, were compelled to resign by a Democratic 
Senate, and Young and Van Shaack resigned their seats because 
these senators had not been expelled. 

Take the twenty-five years which followed as the era of the 
ascendency of the Republican party, and of that party from 
which it sprang. Your legislative bodies are invariably found 
— almost immediately they became — purchasable. Twice within 
that time, the gi'eat office of Senator of the United States — the 
seat of Clinton, Van Buren, Wright and Marcy — has been put 
up at auction and knocked down to the best bidder. It was 
not in an assembly of German or Irish citizens, it was not among 
Democrats, but it was in the caucuses of Republican members 
of the Senate and Assembly, elected by the Republicans of the 
rural districts. 

The municipal corruptions of New York city are the results 
of irresponsible power acting in the secrecy of bureaus and com- 
missions. They are the outgrowth of twenty years of Republi- 
can legislation at Albany, and a partnership of plunder between 
men of both parties established during that period. 

I have said this much as a demand of historical justice, I have 
no heart for such discussions. I know the mass of Republican 



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friends are of good intentions. I have no taste for a rivalry 
which is degraded into a mei'e comparison of tlie relative size 
of the loprous sores that are on the bodies of the respective 
parties. Let us rather engage in a generous emulation. Let the 
people judge us by v^^hat we do to cleanse our parties, and to purify 
the official trusts of the country, and to elevate the standard of 
public morality. 

Principles are the test of political character. The Democracy 
always made fidelity to official trust and justice to the toiling 
masses, who earn their bread by the sweat of their brow, a fun- 
damental article in the party creed. It is time now to proclaim 
and to enforce the decree that whoever plunders the people, though 
he steal the livery of heaven to serve the devil in, is no Democrat. 



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